A call to arms

As China muscles up, Australia and Japan are doing the same in a hurry

NEWTON’S law of motion tells us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What’s true for science may be true for geopolitics. For long, the United States held the expansion of China in good check. Now a national lethargy has overwhelmed the policeman of the world, forcing it to withdraw within its borders. The US navy does make occasional forays into the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf to show that America is not a spent military force. Australia and Japan think them not to be enough. To them, deterrence is made of sterner stuff. Both the middle powers want an equal and opposite reaction to every action of China. The world acknowledges China to be a power to be reckoned with (it is said to be the third most powerful nation militarily), but this doesn’t mean it should be the cause for conflagration. In the South China Sea, East China Sea or elsewhere. There are enough trouble spots in the world already. China should not add to it. And it should know that its expansionary moves, both military and economic, are unnerving other nations into rapid action.

Consider Japan. For long, Japan’s pacifist constitution has prevented a military buildup. Plus, its 1960 treaty arrangement with the US for the latter to defend Japan in the event of an attack made such an expansion unnecessary. But Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and China’s growing aggression in Asia are making a stronger Japanese military necessary. It is not unheard of for Japanese fighter planes to scramble to defend its airspace against alleged incursions by China’s fighter planes. Besides defending the country at home, a stronger Japanese military can, together with the US, resolve maritime disputes in Asia, primarily. China, wittingly or unwittingly, is forcing Japan to shed its pacifist identity. And in a hurry, too. In the past, Japan’s military buildup was a question of “if” and “when”. Now it’s a question of “how”. For the balance of power in Asia is set to change. Expect a rearmed Japan not to take it lying down.

Australia is in a similar hurry. As Australian global analyst Stan Grant put it to the ABC News of Australia last week, “China is very much in the front and centre” of the defence strategy down under. As if responding to an American wish, Australia is beginning to pull its own weight. And that spells A$270 billion in a new plan to arm Australia with smart weapons. The idea is to hit the enemy long before it reaches Australian shores. A budget fit for a world just like that of the 1930s, as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison sees it. Is there a Hitler-led Germany-China parallel here? Perhaps, Morrison wants us to give this a big think. Or as Sky News Australia suggests, it was more the world disorder of the 1930s that Morrison was drawing our attention to. There was a fearsome military buildup before World War 2 broke out. Then as now, we are seeing “a conflation of global, economic and strategic uncertainties”, in the words of the Australian prime minister. Understandably, Morrison doesn’t want to be caught playing the fiddle when Australia is burning. Sky News Australia hinted as much. Neither does Japan. Newton’s physics does seem to have geopolitical implications, after all.

For long, the United States held the expansion of China in good check.